


Strings

by Lilly_White



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, FF7, FFVII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Child Soldiers, Clones, Emotional Manipulation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mako - Freeform, Mind Control, Wutai, headcanons about Nibelheim's culture, headcanons about vanishing cultural identities in FF7, i'm sorry i'm like this, the Wutai war, this gets way too grim for a christmas present, well the "people who have S cells" type of clones anyway, why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:16:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9053005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilly_White/pseuds/Lilly_White
Summary: AU where Hojo's 'Sephiroth clone' project was approved for the Wutai war, creating a puppet army for Sephiroth to control. Cloud gets chosen for the project early on. (Part of gaiasanta's Secret Santa exchange!)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jukeboxhound](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jukeboxhound/gifts).



> Prompt was for a Cloud-centric fic inspired by this poem:
> 
> "The moment you give unmoving things voices  
> Is when unmoving things start to come alive.  
> The sky was just the sky,   
> Before thunder broke through the atmosphere  
> And an omnipotent tongue spoke through the clouds  
> So I gave my heart a voice,   
> The loudest one I could muster
> 
> And all it had for me was your name."
> 
> I got a bit carried away with the world-building, and then fell sick, so I'm sorry it isn't finished! I will upload the next parts in the next 2-3 days. :)

 

_-_

Claudia Strife remembers the days before metal and Mako. The wind, and the grey mountains – the superstitions hearkening back to days where people believed the words of their elders rather than ShinRa-stamped history books. Back then, the people of Nibel were mountain folk; they were hunters, cobblers, tailors; they lived with their hands inside animal hides, taking from the land what the land deigned to give them. She remembers the little girl she had been. Always, there was the talk of changing tides – the talk of a growing threat in the East. She would be sent out in her stitched furs, like all children, growing up learning her parents’ trade rather than being schooled. In the beginning, she took care of her parent's domesticated animals rather than hunting and tanning. But it wasn’t long before her father plunged her tiny hands into their tanning vat and taught her how to turn flimsy skin into tough, unyielding leather.

She remembers the Western families who would meet them, with their hands full of glittering magic. They spoke of a land called Wutai or Cosmo Canyon and Claudia would listen to them with sparkling eyes as she sold them her family’s hides, picturing sun-kissed orange mountains and burbling summer rivers. Nibelheim was surrounded by pilgrim folk, then, all set on reviving the ways of the Ancients in the face of the growing industrialism of Rocket Town and Corel up north. When the pilgrims made their trading stops in Nibelheim there would be nights in the village square where their stories of an ancient past would come alive. Throngs of children and adults would sit around the makeshift stage around the well, watching multicoloured arcs of magic shoot through the air, brilliant as sunlight against the inky backdrop of nightfall.  

She remembers the men who came. Uniforms, cars, pockets full of silver technology. She had been trusting, then – too awed to believe anyone other than good, trustworthy people could talk with so much eloquence. They offered to build schools, to aggrandise local businesses, stating the successes of northern towns to whet the villagers’ appetites. Claudia didn’t understand at first, why her parents were so reticent to let these men from the East take over. But too many Nibel villagers were tired of the gruelling work, the struggle to make ends meet when there was talk of riches and splendour in the townships all around them. As far as Claudia remembers, there had been people leaving Nibelheim for promises of success and the comforts of an easier life.    

It was an insidious thing. First, there were the soft-skinned teachers, the bright hallways and rooms with running water. Claudia remembers, perhaps shamefully, how she had turned against her parents and asked why they continued to refuse the offers to modernise their own home. She didn’t understand then, the value of something ancestral, the hearkening to ages past, to people long dead who still contributed intimately to who she was.

-

She was a teenager when their business started to crumble, and unease started to spread. The pilgrims had become more and more scarce, and there was talk in town about how they had always been little more than beggars, that they had always kept up appearances because they thought the land belonged to them. It didn’t make sense – the pilgrims had always been her friends – but little by little, Claudia began listening to what she was told. The people from Wutai, especially, with their dark skin and their slanted eyes, they were little more than beasts, said the teachers – just wait, wait and see, soon they’ll reveal their true intentions.

Claudia doesn’t remember clearly when the soldiers started to appear. There were more and more in town, and the talk of ‘protection’ and ‘war’ and ‘taxes’ started cropping up. By then, her father had started working in construction sites for the new Mako reactor up in the mountains, and the raggedy ends of their cobbler business fell to her and her mother. She didn’t want to keep it up – she was getting an education, she had friends who wore nail varnish and Eastern summer dresses and she didn’t _want_ it, didn’t _want_ to reek of dead things and leather and come to class with her forearms stained black and red. But one look from her mother, and she put her head down. One thing that the Easterners would never quite stamp out was the loyalty, the sense of family fealty that shone in every Nibel child's eyes.

Then, all too suddenly, they were at war. Against what, or whom, she never quite understood. She only knew that they were in danger, and the Easterners were the only ones who could protect them. She remembers now, with a sting of self-loathing, how she would look on any stray pilgrims who would appear in the night, asking only for food and shelter. She would rage at her mother, telling her to turn the filthy beggars away, that surely they would get into trouble for fraternising with the enemy.   

She doesn’t remember when their clientele became exclusively military. Instead of soft rabbit-fur swaddling clothes and thick leather for travelling cloaks, she sold hides that became chest plates, bracers and shin guards, belts and many-layered corsage. The soldiers wouldn’t pay them – the Nibel folk were doing their duty, and their payment was protection. After all that the Easterners had already done for them, it seemed obvious. At first, Claudia believed them, worked hard for them, enamoured as she was by their sharp Eastern clothes and easy attitudes. It was when her family started going hungry that she started wondering, that perhaps she might’ve been wrong. And try as she might to ignore the muffled red alarm in the centre of her being, warning her that she’d been blind all this time – it was still there, like a red hot pain pulsing in her chest as she sat in her thin Eastern dress, sewing fox furs to the coats of her protectors.

-

Every winter solstice, the Nibel folk would come together to celebrate in the vast hall of the mayor’s house. Claudia was twenty-one, her messy blond hair smoothed back in a slick Eastern style, her black hands hidden under dainty white lace gloves that a soldier had given her. She was well-liked among the throngs of soldiers, and her mother‘s heart bled whenever she strode out after dark, her nose turned up to all the warnings. That night, her mother could only watch as one of Claudia’s soldier devotees hung close to her, making her laugh and touching her hair. They had always taken what they wanted. And she knew she was powerless to stop them if they wanted to take her daughter. Every parent knew the dangers of a town suffocated by a military presence – every parent tried their hardest to keep their daughters close.

It happened out in the cold, in the mayor’s chocobo stables that were empty since the animals had all been commandeered by the captains. There was hay in Claudia’s hair and the soldier held her blackened hands down as he took her virginity. The metal of his pauldrons was cold against Claudia’s skin and she remembers looking up at the wooden slatted ceiling, something blooming in the back of her mind – an understanding, perhaps, of exactly what was happening, the powers beyond his scrawny muscles that were pinning her down. She curled her legs around the soldier’s waist as the words rang hollow in her mind – _I chose this_ , _I chose this, this is all on my terms – but what if it isn’t? What if it never has been?_

_-_

News came one day that her father had had an accident up on the Mako reactor construction site. Claudia put one hand on her swollen belly, and held her mother’s hand with the other. She remembers how her mother hadn’t allowed herself to cry – how her first words had been, ‘What are we going to do to feed ourselves, now?’ Somewhere down the line, her father had become little more than the provider, the man in the grimy foreign uniform who would come home at night and contribute little else than grunts and whisky breath. She hardly remembers the man who had bounced her on one knee and taught her how to track wild animals. When they stood around the customary funeral pyre in the shadow of the Nibel mountains, she tried hard to recall the last time she had seen him smile.

-

When her son was born, she was alone. Her mother had spiraled into depression, and hardly stirred for anything or anyone. Claudia remembers how tiny her son had been, wrapped up in her soft wolf furs, blue eyes too big for his face. Adamantly, she brought him up with her parent’s customs, though they hardly had any animals left for him to take care of – it was increasingly difficult to uphold the business now that there was a curfew. Claudia had shared her food with him, sleeping through her hunger pangs with the knowledge that at least her son would be alright.

She couldn’t stand the thought of him going hungry. There was a new program in town that swore to strengthen the children of the Nibel folk. Their slogans were all about understanding how difficult the task of parenting was under so much duress. Let us take care of your children for you. Let us help them grow into sturdy young men who will be trained in the arts of the East. Let us build a bridge between our cultures that will stand strong in the heart of this storm.

They offered a big allowance to anyone who gave in their children. Claudia hadn’t eaten in days. She didn’t know how long it had been since her mother had eaten any solids, either. She had no choice. Her son was all she had left. She remembers holding him in her arms in the waiting room, eyes brimming with tears. The call. _Claudia Strife? This way, please_. Sitting in the stark white lights of the hospital room while the white coats prodded and poked at her son’s tiny body, weighing him, testing his blood. _Yes, he is suitable_ , they said.

How she had screamed that night. How she had clutched her empty belly, the space under her heart where her son had been. 

When she fed her mother spoonfuls of expensive Eastern foods that the program granted her, she couldn’t help the glare, the hatred that spilled from her tired eyes. Why didn’t your generation do anything? she wanted to yell at her mother. Why didn’t you stop them? Why didn’t you throw them out when you still had the chance? Listlessly, her mother’s mouth gummed at the broth.

It wasn’t much longer before she joined her husband in the swirling green streams below the earth.

-

Cloud grew up with eyes full of the dead. They glowed blue, bluer than Claudia had ever seen in a human being. Monsters from high up in the mountains would imbibe enough Mako fumes to glow like that, and Claudia couldn’t help thinking of claws and sharp talons whenever she held him in her arms. Until he became of age to be swallowed properly into his promised education, he was allowed to continue living with her, and she relished every moment, refusing to think of the time he would be ripped away.          

There was no need to uphold the family business, because she lived well now – but she taught him her family’s craft, regardless. She held her son’s hands down in her family’s tanning vat, as her father had once held hers. He cried and wailed at first, thinking the stink too overbearing, but she forced him, waiting for his indignant shrieks to die down, waiting until he understood the value of what was being given him. I was a cobbler, my mother was a cobbler, and you will be one, too, she murmured into his ear. Before your fingers learn to stroke the paper of those foreign bastards, you will learn what it is to make skin tougher than tree bark. You will learn to make yourself unbreakable.

-

He learned how to skin the beasts and birds that her mother brought down from Mt. Nibel, how to cure and tan and dye, how to stitch with curved needles. To his mother’s delight, his hands were soon rough and stained just like hers, and his skin bore the same heady scent of leather and dye. She pressed her love onto him aggressively, as if she could smother every bit of the enemy out of him. He only asked about his father once – a person that was so absent from his life soon ceased to pique his interest. Selfishly, this pleased her to no end. He was _hers_.

She remembers how eager he was to join her on her hunting trips. One time, he’d followed her without her knowing. She had been tracking a white wolf that other villagers had spotted, a giant bloodthirsty creature that the Easterners weren’t doing a thing about. Hunting rifle held firmly in her hands, she had crept and tracked and ran, until the thing had pounced on her, eyes wild and red. She remembers misfiring and crumbling to the floor. She would’ve surely died if Cloud hadn’t shouted and lured the beast away. She remembers how tiny he had appeared, how scrawny as he ran through the forest, jumping over fallen logs, breathless as this mountain of white fur galloped after him. She’d trailed the rifle on it until it gained him – slashed his back – blood arching up and a small body flying forwards. The name had ripped out of her throat, _CLOUD,_ she’d been so afraid. So afraid.She’d marched forwards, firing at the beast until it toppled, wheezing and burbling its last.

Cloud’s scars took weeks to heal. But he was so proud of them. And she didn’t care that the Easterners lowered her allowance that month, for putting her son in danger. She and Cloud peeled the wolf’s skin away from the flesh together, nets of blood on one side, snow white fur on the other. Against her wishes, Cloud boasted about it to the Easterners so that they would commission her. Upon their behest, she used the fur as lining for an expensive-looking set of cloaks, boots and gauntlets, and gave them to the men in suits. She kept the wolf’s skull when Cloud asked her to. This isn’t encouragement for you to come running after me again, she scolded him as she set it up on their mantelpiece, its empty eye sockets surveying the room. Cloud smiled. He had never talked much, but those eyes told her all she needed to know.

-

She wanted to be the only god of his existence. For him to turn away all other hearts but hers. In a dark corner of her mind, she wanted him to rebel, to refuse the program and tie together the loose strands of her courage so that they could run away together, mother and son, start again in a place that wasn’t so wretched. But the bigger he grew, the more his mind started turning to other things than her. More specifically, one person. A name consistently fell from his lips when he came back from the new Eastern school, and Claudia’s skin would crawl every time this strange name would fill her son’s usually silent mouth, pressing every curve with more insistence and urgency than  _I love you_ or _mother._ She was a Strife – all she could do was endure, so that was what she did, even as doomsday approached on its long, spidery legs.

Remember who you are, she told him when the time came for him to climb up into the helicopter. It would take him to the Eastern military base on the Wutai continent, along with the other children of the program. Write to me often. He held onto her, his dry face pressed into her bosom, and she nestled her mouth into his spiky blond hair and thought, _please, please forgive me._

_-_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Finally finished this, just in time for it count as a New Years present too! :D It took a lot twists and turns, and I may have strayed a bit far from the kind of story the prompt made me think of initially, argh. I hope you still like it!

-

His mother had never known exactly what the program entailed. She refused to know, and Cloud suspects it's because of that guilt of hers. She never mentioned it, but somehow she still managed to smother him with it – the way she told him she loved him every night, or the way she always insisted on cooking for him and fulfilling the outdated role of the ‘mother’ that his program friends found quaint. At first, Cloud had accepted that she had her own past, made her own mistakes, and was only trying to make up for them. He’d borne her affections and quirks as best he could. Then, he had taken offence to her lack of interest – the program was his entire life, after all. Well. It was _almost_ his entire life. How could she choose to ignore something that contributed so gigantically to who he was? It was difficult to remember what happened at his mother’s house, when surrounded by so many Midgarian luxuries (only old people call Midgarian things “Eastern”, and it annoyed him to no end that his mother still said it too) – it was difficult not to dream of going back, when he was home. Now, even as he watches his mother falling away as the helicopter gains altitude, it’s difficult not to be excited that he will be permanently surrounded by what he loves most. No interruptions.

-

When he arrives at the military base’s academy, there are Mako tanks aplenty just like at school; there are needles and check-ups, health monitoring every single morning; four bunks per room and porridge at 6am sharp. Cloud has been learning how to wield a sword and materia since the age of eight, so he slips into the familiar routine without any qualms. There’s a war, the teachers say, just like in school – there’s a war out there, and we need soldiers. We need more people like _him_.

Sephiroth.

The kids in the program all know his name. There’s a strange mystique about the teenager, the silver-haired kid who is hardly older than them but who has already single-handedly led battalions across the scorched earth of Wutai. Cloud has heard the boy’s name all his life, and he jealously believes he loves and understands Sephiroth far better than any other boy in the program. They all know him like he grew up with them – his blood type, his height, where he likes to eat, what his favoured sword guard is, the pets he's had, what his favoured summons and elementals are, the battles he’s won. Sephiroth is the goal, the one person to aspire to. Cloud’s mother always used to say that Cloud has other things that define him, bone-deep,  but _this_ – this is what makes his soul sing, living up to this absent brother, this hero that he’s never even met. He learns the appropriate sword guards (holding his bokken above his head like Sephiroth does), the appropriate ways to use magic (everyone else thinks Sephiroth favours Ice, but Cloud focuses on his Earth because he knows better).

Cloud is one of the last to become proficient enough to be given All materia, but once he’s given the privilege, he wreaks carnage in the VRS, lighting up hoards of monsters, hands out as he cracks open the ground for them to be swallowed in. He forgets to write to his mother for weeks. When he reads her letters, it’s with a twinge of guilt, and a hand passing absent-mindedly over the scars on his back.

-

Steadily, as the war goes on and he’s sent with a few others on skirmishes to clear nearby camps of monsters, frustration grows in him. Their hero never deigns to grace them with his presence other than photographically or on the TV. The teachers are always using the same motivation – you are being trained for him, he will come for you when you’re ready, you will all fight alongside him – but after years of training with no reward, the teenagers become impatient. Strained. Sephiroth is never there to enforce the identity he is supposed to be lending them, and Cloud has never been good at constructing himself without someone’s help.

Along with a few other students, Cloud’s love begins to be edged with something close to hatred, a vague jealousy that Sephiroth might not share the same visceral yearning to see him, touch him, imbibe his scent and watch the shapes of him bloom. Cloud grinds his teeth, voicing his rebellious thoughts in the dorms after dark. The hard-edged teens who share his frustration wonder – does Sephiroth even care about us? Is he ever going to come? One girl from Nibelheim (Leila, from a family of jewellers) mentions the idea of ‘propaganda’, and how her parents had never believed that this war was legitimate at all. Cloud perks up at this, remembering his mother’s pursed lips, the possessive way she gripped his shoulders whenever a man in uniform approached. Have you guys ever wondered why we’re even at war? says Leila. But she’s gone too far. It’s unthinkable to imagine the war as something other than a mould into which to pour their formless lives. Don’t talk about things you don’t know, says one of the Nibelheim boys (Cyriel, from a family of hunters). The next time they gather to talk, she isn’t there.

-

The captains and teachers in charge of the program catch wind of these dissenting teens and the unrest they’re stirring. According to the upper levels, the young people will only be fit to work with Sephiroth once they reach physical maturity – the average is set at sixteen. The theory is that their puberty-based changes and the program’s genetic additions will reach harmony around that age. But something has to be done to prevent this new unrest. The teachers reach out to the generals who command the child prodigy, asking them to arrange at least a short visiting date. Their argument is that since the war cooled down six months ago, ShinRa’s intelligence agency has been waging it more than the soldiers themselves, leaving time for children to learn how to be children, and perhaps take a break. But the generals are picky about who they let into Sephiroth’s entourage. Sephiroth is still a vital part of their operation, having to keep up to date on every new development – the notion of a ‘break’ equates cold storage in the ShinRa executives’ minds. They eventually agree to a single day visit.

-

It’s Cloud’s fifteenth birthday. For days, there has been a rumour – a whisper in the classrooms, around the campfires during missions. _Sephiroth’s coming for a visit. I heard the white coats talking about preparations. It’s for real this time._ Cloud doesn’t want to believe this as there have been similar false reports throughout his whole stay. But a part of him aches for it to be true.

He’s sitting in his Materia Theory class, slotted between Cyriel and a perpetually snot-nosed kid from Kalm called Gavin. Cloud has notes about a recently discovered materia that they’ll all be studying before they acquire it – ‘Slash-all’. Even though his grades weren’t all too sparkling in the beginning, Cloud has quickly developed into that quiet brainy guy whose impeccable notes are always being wrestled from him by the rest of the program kids. Currently, the notes are still lying on the table in front of him, though he’s already got kids looking over his shoulder to check them out. He’s eager to use Slash-all; according to his research, it’s one of those materia that enchants your whole body, enhancing your agility and accuracy in such a way that your melee slashes seem divinely guided from one enemy to the next. But it’s difficult to concentrate on theory.

There’s a stir in the classroom, the usual whispers about a visit that Cloud no longer believes in. He’s been thinking about his mother more often lately. He wonders sometimes, in the darkest parts of night, if it’s unnatural for him to feel this hollow whenever he conjures up her face. It’s been five years since he left her. Has she got new wrinkles? Does she still wear those green plastic earrings that are far too big for her? Has he ever known her as somebody beyond his mother?

 The teacher enters, and a hush falls over the class. He clears his throat, observing how intently his students are watching him. He begins his lecture on the materia, explaining the researchers’ adventure in finding it, how its peculiar properties were discovered, the area of Cetra ‘body magic’ that it taps into and what it means for their studies of Cetra culture.

He clicks his remote and the overhead projector turns on, showing a paused video on the entire wall behind him. The students recognise that silver ponytail and lean frame straight away – it’s a video of Sephiroth in action, his back to the camera, sword lowered at a defensive hip guard. The students all sit a little straighter. The teacher clicks play. There is first an example of Sephiroth hacking down a whole pack of scaly pink and blue Tail Vaults that Cloud has had to deal with so often around the military camps. The oversized lizards hiss and fall apart in halves, paws and tails scattering around Sephiroth’s training sword. The program kids all use the same sword – it’s a relatability gimmick. The next video is of Sephiroth equipping an organic Slash-all shard into one of the slots on his sword hilt, and lunging again at about a dozen Tail Vaults. His form was already impeccable, but the Slash-all allows him to launch into backflips and flying lunges that reach the edges of the pack, his body never showing an ounce of fatigue or hesitation as he moves from one to the next. He’s even more godlike than usual and the students are utterly silent, staring at this twenty-year-old like he’s still some glorious deity even with his hair falling in his face and grime all over his skin.

Every tutorial video pulls at the hearts of the rebellious ones, reminding them that they are only worthy of this impersonal digital love. Cloud pulls his eyes away from the video, staring down angrily at his notes. Despite himself, he had hoped… like every birthday of his, that on this day, at least… It had been childish. He shouldn’t have expected anything.       

The screen rolls up again, the projector is switched off. The hour of theory goes by, and then the teacher leads them out for practice. They strap on their wire-mesh sparring masks and shoulder pads in the dressing rooms, and file out into the practice field, squared in as it is by the Wutain jungle. Cloud’s body knows this ground perhaps more intimately than even the pathways of the Nibel mountains; he’s spent five years training here, being smacked down against it, rolling in it, reaching for his weapons through tangled grass. He moves like a boy in his element, the hot Wutai air cloaking his shoulders, brushing away any Nibel frost that might’ve still clung there.

The teacher is talking to a young man in the same black, opaque sparring mask, surely an older pupil who will be helping him to teach this class. Cloud has always disliked the stuffy masks – he finds it difficult to breathe in there, and hates the way his saliva dribbles down the wire-mesh. He straps it to his hip, and runs alongside Gavin and Cyriel for warm-up. After some high-intensity working out, the kids wind down and chat amongst themselves as they form a circle in the field, too accustomed to sparring classes to need direction.

The sparring teacher and older pupil both stride to the centre of the circle. Everyone waits for the teacher to introduce the anonymous pupil, but all he does is gesture at the crowd, as though inviting the pupil to take his pick. Cloud is one of the few who like to keep their masks off until the very last moment – it’s usually allowed, especially since they started being sent on missions without any facial protection. But this time, he feels oddly naked without the mask on. Like it’s inappropriate to wear his identity like this, shamelessly. He’s unstrapping his mask from his belt, eyes glued to the tall, lean pupil. There’s something strangely magnetic about him. Cloud has always been awed by the older program kids and the way they handle higher level moves with ease, but this guy… there’s something about how he fits the program uniform, the mask, as though they’re part of his own body. As though he has no face under that wire mesh mask.  

The pupil faces Cloud’s section of the circle, and Cloud realizes how his face must stand out in the wall of black masks. He’s never been particularly proud of his melee skills, but for some reason he wants to be picked for the demonstration, this time. He wants the pupil to lift that long, lean arm towards him, and pull him into his magnetism.   

It feels like a dream when the pupil lifts a long, lean arm and does exactly that; like Cloud wished it hard enough for him to respond. Cloud steps forwards, eyes still locked to that blank mask, trying to see hints of a face in the tiny gaps. He can only glimpse the glow of Mako eyes, floating in an eerie darkness. The teacher gives Cloud a piece of yellow materia, and he mechanically slots it into his hilt. He doesn’t spare a thought for how lifeless the materia feels – how he could’ve slotted a marble or a stone into his hilt and felt the same effect. It doesn’t matter. He feels the rush of something like magic, making his hair stand on end, and doesn’t question how different it is, how he feels twice as tall and brimming with power. It must be the materia.

The circle spreads to give them room. Cloud and the pupil salute each other, swinging their bokkens to the side and bowing. The pupil hunches, drawing his bokken up near his shoulder in a protective guard. The teacher is saying something about the two boys’ skill imbalance, and how Slash-all should make up for it on Cloud's side. Cloud doesn’t listen. His world has been reduced to the black-clad body ahead of him, that black mask pointed at him with the presence of a big unblinking eye. He moves and it follows. Feet sliding in the long grass, he lunges, and their wooden bokkens collide once, twice, then in rapid succession, tilting left and right as they fall into stepping patterns. With each blunt hint Cloud’s moves become bolder, more unpredictable, and what started out as a polite spar quickly turns vicious. The others watch as his shoulders drop, mimicking the anonymous pupil’s stance. His legs move slowly when stalking, and in bursts when attacking – he blocks and spins and _flies_ , but the enemy meets each attack as though their spar were choreographed.

Cloud moves like he was meant for this. The other kids all hold their breath, watching and jumping out of the way as soon as a bokken swings a bit too far out. But somehow, it remains contained. Cloud can’t even see where he’s lunging any more – the pupil is all around him, the black body is the entire world, and wherever Cloud strikes he always seems to find him. It’s exhilarating. Cloud attacks like he’s surrounded by strings he has to cut, and the pupil avoids him with inhuman dexterity. Cloud thought the guy wasn’t equipped with Slash-all – he is reminded of the lesson, of how this is supposed to be a comparison, and he wants to win, he _needs_ to win – but then something hits the back of his legs, and the pupil slides his bokken along the tendons behind Cloud's knees. Had it been a steel blade, the tendons would’ve been severed. Cloud goes down on one knee obligingly, accepting defeat with gritted teeth.   

He looks up at that big black eye as the pupil comes around and stands in front of him. Cloud’s panting, so full of energy still that it’s difficult to stay down. This dancing, this perfect synchrony of movements – he’s never had a sparring partner like this, so fluid and responsive, guiding him into mindless patterns of steps and parries. He almost forgot about everyone else – he’s never been that close to bliss before. Disappointed, he waits for the pupil to perform a symbolic killing blow to end the duel. But the pupil brings a hand up to his mask instead, and pulls it off.

Silver hair spills over the pupil’s shoulders and chest. There is a jawline, a mouth, a set of features that Cloud knows intimately well. Cloud is kneeling, staring up, his mind completely blank. He slowly recognizes each section, the glowing eyes, the nose, the wind-chafed cheeks and lips all chapped and peeling. Something about those features being right here, now, feels about as wrong as seeing his own reflection move in the mirror.

Cloud doesn’t believe the pupil’s identity until everyone around him goes down on one knee, too.

The rush of magic feels like a leaden cloak, now. He can feel it compressing his lungs, weighing on his back so that his knee seems to sink further into the mud. Cloud feels his neck aching, his shoulders buckling under the weight until his forehead is pressed into the mud, too. Everything inside him is pulled down by the knowledge – the certainty that he is inferior, he is a servant, he has always been a servant, and this man is his god.

‘Please forgive me,’ Cloud says against the mud. ‘I didn’t know it was you.’

-

Sephiroth – _the_ Sephiroth, right here, right now in front of him – picks up his bokken from the floor. He goes to the teacher without a word to Cloud while the others are all encouraged to stand up.

Cloud stays down in the mud while the teacher explains that Sephiroth will be drilling them for the day, as a treat for the students’ hard work. Sephiroth forms groups, giving each person a number from one to four and asking each number group to move to a part of the field. The teacher has to grab Cloud by the arm and pull him up, informing him of his own status as a 4.

One student per group is given a piece of yellow materia, and they fight alone against their group to test their enhanced abilities. Sephiroth supervises them, going from one group to the next, hardly giving any input. Cloud is part of one group, and now that his bokken hilt is empty he feels almost abandoned – it’s an odd sort of _ache_ , like he wants that fluidity again, he wants to be guided into a state of grace that he’s incapable of reaching by himself. He’s battered by his group’s Slash-all student, like the rest of them, and by the end of the session they’re all bruised and muddy and in need of a shower.

The dressing rooms are wild. Boys and girls who have grown up together are suddenly attacking each other, barking about their differences and who’s better than who as they get out of their training gear. Cloud wipes the mud off his forehead as he waits in the line for the showers, eyes vague as he replays the moment of realization in his mind. Unlike the aggressive ones, he can’t stop smiling. He looks around himself – the quiet ones are all smiling, too. The frustration has disappeared and he can’t even remember what it felt like to be unhappy. He’s certain that everything is going to be alright, now. Their older brother has come home to them.

They all sit in the cafeteria, chatting about what happened. Cloud sits with Cyriel – Gavin has turned nasty, so they ignore him as he fights with some other kids about performance issues. When Sephiroth comes in flanked by several teachers, everyone shuts up and sits straighter, begging to be noticed. Some of the kids shoot angry glares at Cloud, but Cloud is too happy to care – he was the first to be picked, he feels blessed, almost protected by that fact.    

He watches Sephiroth’s body moving through the cafeteria, glaringly at odds with the little plastic chairs and cheap linoleum floor. His graceful posture would suit marble and gold and polished hardwood, not this dingy little place. Similarly, the black student uniform he’s wearing seems all wrong – there should be long robes, a black cape framing his body, a silver crown rising from his head. As Sephiroth stops in front of the buffet and turns to them, Cloud’s imagination paints the correct surroundings around this boy, this king, this god among men. Sephiroth opens his mouth, and each student leans in.

‘I am content with the results of the training today,’ he says. The voice is so organic now that it isn’t crackling out of a pair of speakers or headphones. It feels like he’s murmuring right into Cloud’s ear, lips moving against the delicate shell. Cloud puts a hand over his mouth to hide his smile.

‘I am very happy to meet you all,’ Sephiroth says, and Cloud doesn't hear how stiff it sounds, doesn't care that Sephiroth is only spewing formalities. He stands for a moment longer under hundreds of adoring gazes, then says as a conclusion, ‘I look forward to fighting alongside you.’

It is a declaration of love; that ‘you’, the intimacy of it, the liquid ‘y’ rolling off of Sephiroth’s tongue and the round vowel stating a claim over each student that hears it. For Cloud, the ‘you’ is him, and only him. His smile is pushing his cheeks up, and he can feel a lump growing in his throat.

‘Until next we meet,’ Sephiroth says, bowing at the waist. His hair spills down, and every kid watches him straightening, their eyes picking up details like the fists, the white knuckles, the stiffness of the shoulders. They all remember reading about Sephiroth’s shyness when faced by crowds – another relatable quality, another thing that makes them feel like they’ve known him forever. When he straightens up, his eyes sweep across the whole cafeteria, and each student knows that _they_ were the one that Sephiroth really looked at.

When Sephiroth leaves, a countdown begins in Cloud’s mind. He was the first to be chosen. He will be the first that Sephiroth takes with him. He knows it in the marrow of his bones.

-

Soon after Sephiroth’s visit, an illness sweeps over the boys and girls of the Wutain academy. The teachers have warned them that the program wasn’t infallible; that there have been different methods employed on each age group to ensure success. Some of the teenagers might suffer some impediments, they say, clipboards in their hands, mouths stretched in tight smiles.

Cloud is in bed one night, staring at the ceiling and fantasizing about his favourite future scenarios, when he hears something like a gurgle. He checks over the side of his bunk, seeing his roommates all stirring as the hacking and gurgling continues. Cloud climbs down his ladder, checks on Gavin. The kid is frothing at the mouth, unable to speak coherently. They all crowd around him, trying to provide what help they can, asking questions. One goes to get a teacher. Cloud leans close when Gavin starts trying to form words – he’s staring desperately at the slats of Cloud’s bed above him, teeth and tongue locked around a single word he can’t say. _Rrrruh. Nnnn. Rennn._ His eyes glow an unusual shade of green, pupils trembling. Cloud holds him until help comes, and Gavin is taken away.

 

The students become nervous. Cloud hears about Leila one day; she has turned into herself, refusing to speak of anything else than Sephiroth, like some kind of senseless fanatic. When Cloud goes to visit her in her quarters before they take her away, she’s shaking, hugging herself, as if she’s trying to stop from falling apart. Her eyes have turned to that ectoplasmic green too, with slit pupils. Cloud has never seen anything more beautiful and terrifying. Like she’s wearing someone else’s eyes. Glory be to Sephiroth, she gasps when he approaches. My blood sings of Reunion. Yours, too. Your whole body is singing. Can’t you hear it?

 

As soon as the kids turn incoherent, the white coats usher them across the brightly lit hallways, locking them away from the others. It’s for the good of the program, say the white coats. We will make them better. This is only a small obstacle.

-


	3. Chapter 3

 

-

 

Cloud has killed things. He’s had his hands in the skin of something alive. He knows what blood feels like on his fingers. (Blood doesn’t feel like anything, it’s just red – stark red, the colour of panic, drawing the eyes in.) He isn't afraid of the concept of war.

Cloud's first battle with Sephiroth is an initiation to the war itself. Mere months after Sephiroth's visit, he flies in the ShinRa helicopter with the other chosen few, the ones that Sephiroth will fight with for the first time. They are being selected in groups, to make sure they are all functional. Cloud used to be terrified that he would succumb to the same illness as the others - but the teachers told him that he was one of the most stable boys there. He takes pride in his resilience, and he does what the therapists tell him to do: he doesn't think of the friends he's lost over these difficult months.

Hot wind blows his spikes of hair against his face as he stares down at the unfurling Wutain jungles below him, the smoking villages and wide brown rivers. Sephiroth’s presence here drenches everything; the landscape rises out of his long shadow. The smoke rising from village fires remind Cloud of lingering perfume after someone has stepped into another room. He wants to wrap himself inside that scent. He breathes in deep, closes his eyes.

-

They are dropped in the middle of a warzone, a village torn apart by guerilla warfare. Cloud and the other fully fledged program soldiers run to the repurposed school, where Sephiroth is waiting for them. They duck their way through curtains of bullets, roll across debris and hide behind pillars. Cloud’s feet tread broken floorboards and pieces of wall as confidently as if they were dead leaves and twigs in the Nibel forests – the adrenaline of the hunt guides him through. He jerks his head from side to side when he glimpses bodies falling. Soldiers get hit by bullets and stray fire spells, others get ambushed by Wutain rebels. Cloud and only two dozen of the others make it to the school.

Sephiroth’s form rises out of the debris like he belongs in this shattered empire. He’s rigging materia to a selection of weapons on the ground while others guard the corners of the school. White dust covers Sephiroth's shoulders, softening his hard edges. Cloud rushes to be the first in the room – sinks to one knee, looks at the floor. Awaits orders. His blood pumps through him. More than ever before, he wants to matter to this man. He wants to _matter_.

He yells, ‘Cloud Strife from the ShinRa program, reporting for duty, sir!’

Sephiroth looks over his shoulder as the young soldiers pour in and surround his men. He looks to his men, nods quickly, and the men start handing out the weapons to the program teens. Cloud is one of three to be handed a sword rather than a gun. He’s smiling at the honour, resisting the urge to go up to Sephiroth and embrace him in gratitude.

When Sephiroth finally turns around to address the program teens, Cloud tries so hard to capture the moment and press it between the pages of his memory that he doesn't really realize what’s happening. Is he talking? Showing them something? Standing there just staring at them? But by the end of it, Cloud knows that he is to follow Sephiroth along with the other swordsmen, clearing out what is believed to be the rebel’s main source of weapons and materia, while the gunmen help to secure the town. 

Cloud believes it’s the Slash-all materia in his sword that gives him that rush of excitement, loosening his body and making him as agile as a cat as he follows Sephiroth through the dense foliage around the town. Sephiroth’s body moves in ways that he has memorized; like anticipating the twists and turns of much-heard story, Cloud follows the movements of his back, the way his long lean legs curl around fallen logs and ferns. They hack at hanging vines, slice through the creatures that pounce at them to defend their territories. In normal circumstances, Cloud would see the exotic blue feathers and thick, lush furs and think of his mother, of the marketplace back home and a big merry meal glowing in firelight. Now, all he sees is glistening red as his blade slashes through skin, cutting them out of the path just as carelessly as the vines.

He’s with Sephiroth. Nothing and no one can get in his way.

They come to the holdout. Cloud’s eyes take in tall wooden posts, a shelter made of tree branches and foliage. Beds. A stink of decay. He sees nothing but the path of his sword: neck, arm, across the waist, leap to that runaway, cut her down. He doesn’t notice how small she is, how she crumples under his knees. Mako eyes glance around, feral. There are more bodies dotting his path, a bloody constellation in the dark. His arms are soaked in blood, his face set in a snarl.

Something rips through him – hooks into his consciousness. He looks down, expecting to see a hole in his stomach, or a dagger piercing his skin. Nothing. Flashes of panic, cold sweat down his spine. He turns to see his brother – oh, his poor brother, speared through by a scrawny Wutain swordsman. Sephiroth’s sword swings and the Wutain falls away, blood pulsing from his open carotid. Then it's Sephiroth’s turn to fall.

Cloud has to help him – he can _feel_ the man’s hurt, like a coal pressed into his side, he’s biting back a scream but something guides him away, back to the path, back to the darkness. He swings his blade into figures of eight, plucking lives with each loop. He’s seeing bloody skin and hearing nothing but the urgency to kill screaming in his ears.

When there is no one left, Cloud can see again. He finds Sephiroth with the two other swordsmen. Sephiroth is sitting on a log, holding his side. Blood is trickling down his hip and along his thigh, and he’s breathing hard as he conjures a healing spell. Cloud drags himself over, holding onto the same side. Sephiroth watches as Cloud comes over and collapses at his feet. Green light seeps between Sephiroth's fingers, and his eyes are fixed on Cloud as Cloud feels his own phantom pain ebb away. Cloud takes that cool curiosity for something far more, something like the recognition between brothers in arms. He smiles.

He does not look to see how many he’s killed as he follows Sephiroth back to the village.

-

Green eyes stare into his. There is fire, sputtering between long pale fingers. 

'Do you feel this?' Sephiroth says, then holds his free hand over the flame.

Cloud winces. 'Yes.'

They switch. Cloud holds fire in his left hand, burns his right hand with it. Across from him, Sephiroth closes his eyes, lifts his chin.

'I can feel that, too,' Sephiroth murmurs. 

'What does it mean?' Cloud asks, heart in his throat. 

Sephiroth lifts his eyebrow. 'What do you think?'

It means they have a bond, it means Cloud was singled out among the rest of them, it means love,  _love_ , Cloud knows it - he alone knows Sephiroth this well, he alone can feel what Sephiroth is feeling, always - 

'I don't know,' is all he can stammer. 'I wouldn't presume to know.'

Sephiroth gets up, touches a hand to Cloud's shoulder, before retiring for the night. 

-

Days bleed into each other. There is fire and carnage and Cloud wonders if Sephiroth notices him more than the others. Sometimes, there are words – most of the time, Sephiroth keeps his breath to himself. Cloud prides himself on there being a primal understanding between them that makes words unnecessary. He doesn’t see it as callousness.

Sometimes, Cloud catches Sephiroth staring at him with an intensity that makes him wonder if he isn’t reading the man all wrong. There is a terrible doubt that claws through the mush of his feelings, reminding him that he’s never sustained a single conversation with this guy. Cloud only knows details about a life that Sephiroth left behind in the city – out here, he is wild and cold and silent, as though living in war-torn jungles has alienated him from the boy Cloud was taught to love. Cloud has always thought he could relate to Sephiroth, but then Sephiroth will stare at him like that, he’ll move in a certain way, he’ll lay his bony fingers over tree trunks and curl them like talons and Cloud will step back, ankles tangled in his uncertainties.

-

Cloud and Sephiroth are sitting together with another swordsman, waiting for a Wutain band of fighters to approach their location. They are behind bits of wall belonging to what was once a great farmhouse, now only giant crumbs going dark with rain. Sephiroth looks at Cloud with that intensity that makes Cloud’s skin crawl. There is something in Cloud’s hand – a foldable knife that he keeps in his boot. He keeps eye contact and there is a singing, like Leila had said, he thinks, at the back of his mind – a singing in his body, something that grows and grows and the rush of blood in his ears blanks out everything except the knowledge, like a starburst in his chest, that he loves this man so much. He loves this man so much. He’ll do anything. Anything. He has no thought except Sephiroth’s. His mind is a playground. His body is a playground. All for Sephiroth. He opens the gates with a wide, broad smile.

_Do what you like with me. I am yours. I have always been yours._

Hours later, he lies awake, with no recollection of what happened that day.

-

 

 

The clouds are being eaten by fire and Cloud is crouching on the ground, staring up at the silky reds and greys. He almost died today. It isn’t the first time. He turns, feeling unbearably heavy.

Sephiroth is sitting near him, a gunman in his arms. It’s one of the program kids that came with them on the skirmish. Cloud watches, dimly aware of what’s happening as Sephiroth lays a hand over the kid’s heart. The kid is bleeding all over – shouldn’t Sephiroth be healing him? But it isn’t Cloud’s business to judge Sephiroth’s actions. He watches mutely as Sephiroth pulls out his own knife, playing with the tip of the blade along the kid’s chest. Then, the blade begins to disappear. Cloud watches as pain flits across Sephiroth’s face, and those turquoise eyes glow as he sinks the blade further and further into the kid’s chest. Confusion opens Cloud’s mouth but he must be mistaken, of course, the kid was bound to die anyway so of course Sephiroth would spare him the pain and allow him a swift death. There’s nothing morbid going on here. Sephiroth would never do something like this out of – what was Cloud thinking? Curiosity?

Cloud doesn’t know what to do with the expression of ecstasy that creases Sephiroth’s face up when the kid breathes his last. Like Sephiroth felt the kid’s death, swallowed it, and let it shudder through his body.

At the back of Cloud’s mind, a quiet, tingling horror begins to grow.

-

He doesn’t know when it became a scream in his mind. _I love him and I am doing this for him. I love him and I am doing this for him_. It was pride, at first – and now it rings like the dogma of a fake, disproven religion, the tattered guidelines on how a son of Saturn must love his father.

Cloud leaves his Slash-all behind one day, because he has a terrible, terrible feeling, and it won’t go away.

He follows Sephiroth on a mission to secure territory that Wutains are protecting against ShinRa plans for the first Mako reactor they’ll build on that continent. As they reach the crowds of families and youngsters, magic that should never have manifested begins to settle on Cloud’s shoulders. He recognises the feeling, and with a sinking heart, realises that it has never been due to the Slash-all. Somehow, it is another type of magic – weakly, he tries to tell himself that it’s just what Sephiroth makes him feel, that euphoria, that sense of flying with angels. But it’s increasingly obvious that Sephiroth is no angel. The bright lights that Sephiroth has always basked in are beginning to go out, and Cloud is terrified of what the darkness will reveal.

The will to close his eyes and let himself be guided overtakes him, and there is a flurry of faces and skin and red things. He knows, somewhere at the back of his mind, that he should open his eyes. He should look at the path instead of blindly rushing into it. He struggles, grinding his teeth. He has to slow down.

He slows just enough to see them – a pair of women, huddling under him, and his blade hanging above them. There isn’t enough time to stop, it’s already swinging downwards. He watches metal cleave limbs, and for a delirious moment he sees his mother in their crow-feet wrinkles, their gnarled hands and tired bodies – he hasn’t felt this way in years, dizzy and nauseous at the sight of blood. The rush overtakes him again, and he’s breathless when he resurfaces – he’s panting, crying, tears running down his face as he runs his sword through defenceless civilians. Who are these people? When did it become a senseless massacre – he remembers words like _protect your Soldier’s honour_ – he’s trying to remember how it felt to be OK with so much killing, maybe find that old rationale, but he’s never relied on words, he’s only ever relied on – that _man_ – a crash of adrenaline and he’s flying again, uncontrollably, and some disjointed part of him wants to scream _LET ME GO –_

There's a moment where everything stops. He has his blade at the throat of a girl of about six. He blinks. Her face is brown, her eyes big and black and shining. There is mud on her face and Cloud thinks about the child he had been, eyes open as he tried to find meaning, tried to fix himself onto _something_ while the world around him slanted further into incoherence. He stares at this tiny little soul and the rush all but evaporates. For a split second, everything is crystal clear. He drops his sword, falls to his knees in front of the child.

She is wearing ribbons in her hair, and a traditional Wutain dress whose goldthread patterns glitter under the muck. Her little legs are rooted to the ground. She is like a pillar of belonging. Cloud wants her to reach into him with those untainted hands and take out everything that was forced in. He doesn’t know what his own traditional clothes even look like any more. Would he wind ribbons in his hair, too? Would the stitched leathers embrace his body just as snugly as this little girl’s dress? He has a thought for the scars on his back. They are all he has left of himself. Warped, toughened skin as a stamp of his old identity.

Sephiroth is behind the girl. He looms, all shredded black cape and writhing silver hair. Cloud looks up at him, sees that he is frowning. Something in Cloud’s body is rising and collapsing, not strong enough to take hold. The little girl tries to move, but Sephiroth places a hand on her shoulder, keeping her there in front of Cloud.

‘What’s wrong?’ Sephiroth says. It’s less a question than him wondering at his own failure, the possibility of such a thing as a program child rebelling against his orders.

Cloud stares up at his nightmare, seeing all the things he used to love and mourning that sweet, irrational feeling that usually accompanied the sight of those eyes, those lips, that flawlessness wrapped in black leather. Love has been replaced by something hot and churning and it _hurts_ and Cloud grinds his teeth to hold back a cry as he returns Sephiroth’s gaze.

‘What the hell am I doing?’ he asks in a choked voice.

Sephiroth watches him with a dangerous calm. He looms, still, like a tidal wave blocking out the sun, hesitating on the brink of destruction.

Cloud looks down at his sword hilt: green materia fills up the slot where the fake Slash-all should’ve been. He holds it up for Sephiroth to see. The words come out strangled, desperate: ‘I thought it didn't matter, nothing mattered as long as it was for you, to please you, but - why did they lie to us? What kind of monster have you made me into?’

‘There are no monsters. There are only men, and the chaos they wreak,’ Sephiroth replies. ‘We fight in unity under one cause. Is that not what you signed up for?’

Cloud is looking at the ground. He has never felt so heavy in his life. It’s like his knees have dissolved into the floor.

‘You signed up to be one with me,’ Sephiroth says slowly. There is a hint of possessiveness in his voice. Cloud can feel himself weakening, remembering the sweetness of giving himself to this man and loving him unconditionally. It’s so tempting to close his eyes again. So tempting. ‘Perhaps I have been too demanding. You should rest once we’re done here.’

Cloud’s shoulders hunch and shake. His eyes are hot and he doesn’t know what he’s thinking any more. So many things are racing through his head. Only one question shines like a beacon in his mind, and it’s impossible to keep it from spilling out.

‘Have you ever loved us like we’ve loved you?’

Sephiroth stands with the little girl against his legs, sword angled at the floor. His eyes glow with something vulnerable, a confusion that Cloud has never seen before.

‘They told me you didn’t require love,’ Sephiroth says.

Cloud stares at him and a terrible calm spreads through him as his heart cracks open, spilling something cold and numbing. He closes his eyes, and gives a sigh.

There is blood, and the silence of a body falling. Ribbons curl lifelessly on the floor.

-

Cloud barely remembers his mother’s stories, about how magic didn’t used to be something you could pick up at the corner store. Magic belonged to the people of the West, whose fingers sparkled with it. Magic was something you prayed to, magic was something you obtained through inheritance and merit rather than desecrating the Mako fountains with technocratic arguments and greedy hands.

Cloud stands, sword at his back. He’s been promoted to supervisor in this new, occupied Wutai. He watches blankly as ShinRa soldiers pillage house after house in the Imperial city. Sometimes, the materia is wrenched from the deepest places of the Wutain houses, the secret compartments that have been sealed for centuries. Sometimes, rigor mortis must be plucked away, finger by finger, to retrieve the treasures. The Wutain people have not wept in years – instead, they stare, their only weapon being silence, crashing, screaming silence that rings in Cloud’s ears every time he lies in his borrowed bed, in his borrowed Imperial house where he lives with Sephiroth and the other chosen program soldiers who survived this long.

This is the price for godlessness. Instead of benevolent gods fulfilling the desire to be watched, Cloud has all of these eyes on him; men who can do nothing but look, and men who look because they own him. He is dissected with every step he takes. There is no moving without being seen; no words to be spoken that aren’t heard. The dominant part of him is happy for the scrutiny; happy to have the chance to prove himself again and again to his superior. Nothing makes this version of him happier. It is an easy existence.   

In his moments of sanity, there is nothing to hold onto but words half-remembered. The sensation of love radiating back. He remembers, washing grime off his arms in the sink and staring at himself in the mirror – being a child, being so loved that it became nauseating. He hadn’t realized then, what a luxury that was.

It hurts like knives in his heart to remember, but he still pulls the memories to him when he’s conscious enough. The longer he waits, the fewer there are within his reach. Wolf fur rising between his fingers. Needle pricks in his back. Being scooped up in hard, dye-stained arms, rocked to sleep with a sing-song language in his ears. _It’s the story of an Ice goddess, and how she fell in love with a demon from the underworld…_  

-

‘What is your purpose, Cloud Strife?’

‘To serve my brother in arms, Sephiroth.’

‘Are you happy with this purpose?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is the extent of your relationship with Sephiroth?’

‘I would die for him.’

‘What do you think of this world we are building?’

‘As long as he is a part of it, it is a beautiful world. I wouldn't change a thing.’

 

-

 

Cloud is seated in a wide, white apartment. The leather under his thighs is smooth, perfectly conditioned. There is a champagne flute in his hand, some synthetic fabrics hanging around the hard edges of his body. Eastern clothing, someone used to say with a sneer. Cuts people up into geometric shapes. Who has ever heard of bodies that evolve in straight lines?

Someone, the most important person, he knows – he is certain of it – stands in front of him. He has shared so much with this person. He would die for this person. The litany drones in his mind, an ancient thing echoing in a void.

‘Do you know why I chose you, Cloud?’

A fingertip traces Cloud’s lower lip. Cloud allows the finger into his mouth, looks up at the face of his god.

‘You think it’s because we are bonded,’ says the god. ‘You think it’s because I appreciate your adoration. But I couldn’t care less whether you love or hate me. What interests me is how you think of yourself.’

The finger exits Cloud’s mouth, and he is guided up to his feet – the champagne finds a table, and there are hands around his waist, a warm weight against his body. Lips, tracing the shell of his ear:

‘Do you remember who you used to be, Cloud? Who you were, before me?’

There are flashes, pricks of something like consciousness. Someone – little hands, wide blue eyes, gripping his shoulders. _Wake up. Wake up._ Cloud’s mouth is open against Sephiroth’s, and the shaking has reached his whole body, little hands reaching into him, _wake up, Cloud, please wake up –_ but he doesn’t want to, this, this is easier, so much easier to accept the heat and belonging and wet lips sucking the soul out of him.

‘I don’t want to remember,’ he says.

‘Yes, you do. That’s why you’re here,’ the god says. The god’s hands are under his clothes. Under his skin. The god holds his heart and Cloud doesn’t know how to reject the affections of a being who could crush the life out of him.  

‘I chose you because somewhere very deep inside that mind of yours, you still know who you are,’ the god says. ‘I want you to show me that knowledge. I want to hear you scream it. We have wiped out everything that ever had meaning, and I know you’re still holding onto your own.’

‘You are my meaning,’ Cloud says.

‘No, Cloud,’ says the god. ‘It’s all wrong, don’t you understand? I am just a husk. You, you are so full of rage and sorrow and ancient songs. You have just forgotten how to sing.’

Hands run down Cloud’s body. There is a soft feather mattress, buttons popping and scattering. There are dead things decorating each corner of this pristine palace and the smell of leather reminds Clouds of someone’s deep, sad voice – someone’s blue eyes, so much like his – the feeling of needles pricking his skin, looping strings through his hide, pulling him back together. This, this is different – this is an unravelling. He is coming apart. There is a god penetrating him through and through and heavy hands holding his wrists down and he feels his back arching as he bursts at the seams, mouth ripping open, eyes flying wide.

There is blood on the sheets. He straddles his god and his skin is breaking, red covering his back as it pours from his reopened scars.

The god’s hands are red, too. He smiles at his devotee, before sucking the colour from his fingers.

-

That night, there is a thunderstorm in the city of metal. Cloud stands, naked in front of the glass walls of the apartment. If he looks hard enough, he can imagine each skyscraper twisting up into silver trees – branches reaching out, bark like cracked glass. Slowly, it’s almost a forest, and the misty roads are almost like grey earth that Cloud could sink his feet into. What does it remind him of? Someone with a deep, sad voice… what happened to them? Why can’t he remember?

_Come here, you silly boy. Let me stitch you up._

He puts his hand on the glass, stares at the heavy grey skies. There are flashes of thunder, and the rain distorts everything, a curtain of water sliding down the windows. Cloud rests his forehead against the cold.

_Remember who you are._

Blue eyes stare back at him, the reflection distorted by rain. And he hears it in the thunder rolling across purple-bellied clouds, arching all the way across the heavens. A claim stronger than any god’s.

 _Mother_.

-


End file.
